Quote

There is a working class - strong and happy - among both rich and poor: there is an idle class - weak, wicked, and miserable - among both rich and poor.

John Ruskin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Ruskin
Age: 80 †
Born: 1819
Born: February 8
Died: 1900
Died: January 20
Aesthetician
Architect
Art Critic
Art Historian
Journalist
Literary Critic
Painter
Philosopher
Poet
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
London
England
Kata Phusin
Rŏsŭkʻin
J. Ruskin
John Rosukin
Jon Rasukin
Dzhon Rëskin
Ruskin
Rich
Class
Working
Idleness
Poor
Idle
Happy
Wicked
Strong
Miserable
Weak
Among

More quotes by John Ruskin

Image
There are no laws by which we can write Iliads.
John Ruskin
Image
Nothing can be true which is either complete or vacant every touch is false which does not suggest more than it represents, and every space is false which represents nothing.
John Ruskin
Image
The proof of a thing's being right is that it has power over the heart that it excites us, wins us, or helps us.
John Ruskin
Image
It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all that he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his readers is sure to skip them.
John Ruskin
Image
Ignorance, which is contented and clumsy, will produce what is imperfect, but not offensive. But ignorance dis contented and dexterous, learning what it cannot understand, and imitating what it cannot enjoy, produces the most loathsome forms of manufacture that can disgrace or mislead humanity.
John Ruskin
Image
There was a rocky valley between Buxton and Bakewell?divine as the vale of Tempe you might have seen the gods there morning and eveningApollo and the sweet Muses of the Light? You enterprised a railroad?you blasted its rocks away? And, now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half-an-hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton.
John Ruskin
Image
I am almost sick and giddy with the quantity of things in my head, all tempting and wanting to be worked out.
John Ruskin
Image
Science deals exclusively with things as they are in themselves and art exclusively with things as they affect the human sense and human soul.
John Ruskin
Image
People are eternally divided into two classes, the believer, builder, and praiser...and the unbeliever, destroyer and critic.
John Ruskin
Image
Though nature is constantly beautiful, she does not exhibit her highest powers of beauty constantly, for then they would satiate us and pall upon our senses. It is necessary to their appreciation that they should be rarely shown. Her finest touches are things which must be watched for her most perfect passages of beauty are the most evanescent.
John Ruskin
Image
A man is born an artist as a hippopotamus is born a hippopotamus and you can no more make yourself one than you can make yourself a giraffe.
John Ruskin
Image
Borrowers are nearly always ill-spenders, and it is with lent money that all evil is mainly done and all unjust war protracted.
John Ruskin
Image
Now the basest thought possible concerning man is, that he has no spiritual nature and the foolishest misunderstanding of him possible is, that he has, or should have, no animal nature. For his nature is nobly animal, nobly spiritual,--coherently and irrevocably so neither part of it may, but at its peril, expel, despise, or defy the other.
John Ruskin
Image
All true opinions are living, and show their life by being capable of nourishment therefore of change. But their change is that of a tree not of a cloud.
John Ruskin
Image
The constant duty of every man to his fellows is to ascertain his own powers and special gifts, and to strengthen them for the help of others.
John Ruskin
Image
The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.
John Ruskin
Image
Whenever I did anything wrong, stupid or hard-hearted, and I have done many things that were all three, my mother always said it is because you were too much indulged.
John Ruskin
Image
I am far more provoked at being thought foolish by foolish people, than pleased at being thought sensible by sensible people and the average proportion of the numbers of each is not to my advantage.
John Ruskin
Image
Every human action gains in honor, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to his Maker and there is no action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test.
John Ruskin
Image
The man who can see all gray, and red, and purples in a peach, will paint the peach rightly round, and rightly altogether. But the man who has only studied its roundness may not see its purples and grays, and if he does not will never get it to look like a peach so that great power over color is always a sign of large general art-intellect.
John Ruskin